Gas compressors are used for many items in the consumer market (to inflate basketballs, toys and tires) and in the industrial market (to compress gas for transport, for powering pneumatic tools and for distributing natural gas from the well head to the user).
The efficiency of prior art commercial gas compressors is poor primarily because practicalities require that the gas be compressed rapidly. Rapid compression makes it nearly impossible to dissipate the heat of compression during the compression process. This inherent heating during the compression process (herein “C-heat”) demands up to 100% more physical work from the prime mover than if the same process was done with complete “C-heat” removal. Typically the prime mover is an internal combustion engine or an electric motor. A rapid compression process with little or no C-heat removal is called an adiabatic compression. Most state of the art compressors operate with adiabatic or semi-adiabatic compression cycles. The energy or work lost due to C-heat increases as the final target pressure for the compressor increases.
If the C-heat can be stored with the compressed gas, then the work potential of the compressed gas would be roughly equivalent to the work required to compress the gas. However, most compressed gas is stored in an uninsulated pressure vessel and the time between the compression of the gas and the use of the gas makes retention of the heat in the gas impractical. Therefore, this 50-100% additional work to compress the gas is lost or wasted. Compression is done while removing all of the C-heat is called isothermal compression. If isothermal compression can be achieved, the energy required to get the same useful work output from the compressed gas could theoretically be cut in half. Stated otherwise, twice the amount of compressed gas can be generated for the same amount of cost in energy or dollars. Historically isothermal compression has been impractical or impossible to achieve because the time for the C-heat to be removed from the walls of the compression device mandates a very slow compression cycle so that heat removal can keep pace with the heat generated by the compression.
Only one type of prior art compressor demonstrates rapid isothermal compression. U.S. Pat. No. 892,772 to Taylor, patented in 1908, discloses a hydraulic air compressor which utilizes a falling column of water infused with millions of tiny spherical bubbles. When the falling column of water falls from a particular height, the bubbles in the water are compressed. Taylor used a 70 foot differential head pressure (about 21 meters) which creates approximately 128 psi (pounds per square inch) pressure to drive 5000-6000 horsepower isothermal compressors.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,276,140 to Keller discloses a device to generate energy through a turbine engine. The Keller device also uses falling water fed through a funnel shaped vertical tube or tunnel in order to compress air bubbles in the falling water. The waterfall drop in Keller was between 30-100 meters. Typical diameters at the top of the Keller funnel tube are approximately 2-7 meters and, at the bottom, the funnel outlet region is typically 0.7-2.0 meters.
U.S. Pat. No. 1,144,865 to Rees discloses a rotary pump, condenser and compressor. However, the Rees '865 rotary pump compressor utilized large cavities having highly curved shaped walls and the cavities were not radial with respect to the rotating container. A turbine-air compressor is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 871,626 to Pollard.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2011/0030359 to Fong generally discusses a centrifugal separator in paragraphs 963, 964, 959 and 983. However, there are no details of the centrifugal separator. U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2011/0115223 to Stahlkopf also discusses centrifugal separators. Neither Fong '359 or Stahlkopf '223 discuss a centrifugal compressor which compresses bubbles in water or a liquid in an isothermal manner to extract the compressed air or gas.